global warming

I was looking for the new environment forum but strangely its not here, whats going on []

So trees and plants are not as good for the environment as we first thought. its just been discovered that tree's don't only breath out oxygen but they also emit lots methane.(how did we not know that before) so they breath in one green house gas but also breath out another.

SOURCE TODAYS BBC NEWS

where does that leave the hug a tree campaign and the environment [] sorry Andrew

it just goes to show how little we know.

Is it wise to plant lots of new forests that will emit large amounts of methane .

another_someone

Trees will both inhale and exhale CO2, but as their primary source of carbon is usually CO2, thus so long as they are growing they must be absorbing more CO2 than they exhale. Once they stop growing, then they will no longer be absorbing more carbon, because they are not using that carbon for growth.

Once a tree dies, then the environment around it will decompose the tree, and release carbon back into the environment. In a stable forest environment, where tree growth will be matched by tree death, there will not be any nett absorption of carbon by that environment. In that case, the process of decay will certainly produce methane.

I have not heard that a living tree will produce methane, but there are many things I have not heard of; and it does not mean it is not so simply because I have not heard of it.

It does go contrary to what we believe but going by the news report the researchers placed various plants including small tree's in separate methane free environments/enclosures removing all possible sources of contamination and allowed then to grow, after a period of time they tested the air inside the enclosure which was methane free and found small amounts of methane. After repeating the experiments and ruling out all other possible routes for the methane to enter the enclosure's they realized the only way the methane could have got into the enclosure was if the plants had naturally release methane along side the oxygen. The report said more experiment are to be done using plants growing naturally in the wild in the rain forests but they believe these new experiments will also give the same results.

It was on the bbc 1 news earlier today, i will check the bbc news at ten but they dont always put the same reports on at different times

I was looking for the new environment forum but strangely its not here, whats going on []

So trees and plants are not as good for the environment as we first thought. its just been discovered that tree's don't only breath out oxygen but they also emit lots methane.(how did we not know that before) so they breath in one green house gas but also breath out another.

SOURCE TODAYS BBC NEWS

where does that leave the hug a tree campaign and the environment [] sorry Andrew

it just goes to show how little we know.

Is it wise to plant lots of new forests that will emit large amounts of methane .

Hey doc maybe you beavers are good for the environment after all[]

Michael HAPPY NEW YEAR

"The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct."K.I.S. "Keep it simple!"

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Science is continually evolving. Nothing is set in stone. Question everything and everyone. Always consider vested interests as a reason for miss-direction. But most of all explore and find answers that you are comfortable with

sharkeyandgeorge

ive often wondered if all these gasses that industrys produced have allways been produced (in much smaller quantities naturally) whats took them out the atmosphere before? fair enough co2 removed by plants but what about the others? and cant we just cultivate the other scrubbers as a balance?

"Defender of the Sea"

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another_someone

ive often wondered if all these gasses that industrys produced have allways been produced (in much smaller quantities naturally) whats took them out the atmosphere before? fair enough co2 removed by plants but what about the others? and cant we just cultivate the other scrubbers as a balance?

"Defender of the Sea"

Methane is easy – it burns in air, providing CO2 and water.

It did occur to me that if these trees are all building up methane within the forest, if that does not increase the likelihood of forest fires. Some forests need regular fires as a natural part of their process (some trees will not even germinate until a fire comes along – the fire gets rid of all the competition, giving those seeds that can survive the fire a head start).

"So trees and plants are not as good for the environment as we first thought. its just been discovered that tree's don't only breath out oxygen but they also emit lots methane.(how did we not know that before) so they breath in one green house gas but also breath out another."

Well it is bit like M Twain "Everyone talks about the Weather but no one does anything about" well not much has changed, fact is the population is addicted to the current lifestyle, so any changes are more likely to be verbal changes in terminology.Seriously though, what can they do about it? it has taken 300 years of planetary abuse, to get this far, and like the Half life principal whereby said problem is compounding, all the time, until it gets to 50% and the next day 100%.It will have to be a sudden catastrophic event, that will even galvanise, any concerted action, towards climate change, though really the problem is really growing.Then we have the CO2 I just cannot see inflating the Planet as some kind of neutral answer, but it will grab attention, for a period, though again I think the Problem is far greater than that.They could capture it, and send it to Mars!

another_someone

Well it is bit like M Twain "Everyone talks about the Weather but no one does anything about" well not much has changed

So what do you suggest, we stop weather – does not sound like either a very practical or desirable thing to do.

quote:fact is the population is addicted to the current lifestyle

It's rather like saying that the population is addicted to food so we should all stop eating.

quote:Seriously though, what can they do about it? it has taken 300 years of planetary abuse, to get this far, and like the Half life principal whereby said problem is compounding, all the time, until it gets to 50% and the next day 100%.

What do you define as abuse, and why pick on the last 300 years.

Humans having been influencing the environment for the last 10,000 years (since the advent of agriculture) at the very least.

300 years may have been the period of the industrial revolution, but in Europe massive deforestation has been happening long before that.

None of it has killed us yet. On the contrary, there are more people alive today than ever before, and the technology of the past would simply not have allowed so many people to be alive at once, or to live so long as they do today.

quote:It will have to be a sudden catastrophic event, that will even galvanise, any concerted action, towards climate change, though really the problem is really growing.

Climate has always been changing, since long before humans arrived on this planet. Humans have themselves had to adapt to ice ages, periods that were warmer than the current period, and much else. Yes, all of this present challenges, but none of it is new, and none of it is insurmountable.

quote:Then we have the CO2 I just cannot see inflating the Planet as some kind of neutral answer, but it will grab attention, for a period, though again I think the Problem is far greater than that.They could capture it, and send it to Mars!

CO2 is the most natural gas on this planet. Volcanoes spew out lots of CO2. It is oxygen that is the 'unnatural' product. Before the first blue-green algae started converting CO2 to oxygen, there was no free oxygen on this planet, just lots of CO2.